Wednesday, April 13, 2016

On the Copy Desk

“We grumbled
constantly about our copyreaders, who were the first people in the newsroom to
read what we had written, and they had the authority to arrange our articles
and to trim them or rewrite them extensively without consulting us and without
removing the bylines that identified us as the authors.

“We suspected that these
desk-bound deprecators and grammatists, these humorless scriveners and censors
of our work, privately envied the freedom and the modicum of fame we enjoyed as
news gatherers in the outside world. I ordinarily returned home from the
newsroom at 8:00 p.m. fearing that one of the heavy-handed copyreaders had
mangled my lead, had blue-penciled most of my favorite phrases.”

—Gay Talese, author and former New York
Times reporter, from A Writer’s Life, 2006(Thanks to alert WORDster Sara Burroughs, a recovering humorless scrivener)

GetTODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISMin your email every weekday morning during WORD season. This is a free “service” sent to the 2,000,000 or so misguided
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’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. But all contain at least a
kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) #tedswordTed Pease,Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.”—Tom Stoppard.